Holler the Dark and the Light
by That Girl Six
Summary: John Winchester was in Hell long before he ever got there. He isn't sure he ever left.


**Disclaimer:** _I borrow out of love, not money. No infringement intended; just spreading of happinesses. Spoilers through "Heaven and Hell". Rated T for Language because I've been married to the military too long to not have a mouth when I'm writing._

**Author's Notes:** _I'm in the process of going through all of my old stories that I've done for _Supernatural_, trying to clean them up and make them postable. (I also intend to edit the ones that are up.) This one happens to already be done, so you get this one first. There should be a few more before the end of the year. There isn't much that I can say about this one except that it's completely out of my usual range. For some reason, I seem to write short fics for this fandom and I have no idea why. I've never done John before, so I hope I got him at least a little right. Anyhoos, thanks for taking the time to read, whether you say anything or not. Enjoy! Six_

_

* * *

  
_

**Holler the Dark and the Light**  
_by That Girl Six_

His boys were eighteen and fourteen-going-on-pubescent-pain-in-the-ass when John Winchester's life became a living hell. It had been pure torture living without Mary, the nightmares of what had been done to her haunting his sleep, the reality of what they did in the dark and what it would turn his children into haunting his every other hour. He didn't know Hell, though. Oh, no. Not until Heaven and Hell, cosmic fucking comedians that they are, aligned to jack him up the ass real good one last time.

He knew the moment everything changed in the same way he felt the exact minutes his children were born. Anyone who knew them could see they had changed. The following years of battling with Sam taught him all too well that the kid thought it was because he was different from them, that he didn't want to be them. But it wasn't that at all. If he had been a terrified father before, after it all came together the word '_terrified_' didn't begin to come close to covering it. Hell, Bobby flat out told him he'd lost his mind. The old coot was probably right.

He supposed he should blame Hell first since one of her minions was responsible for cluing him in. If he hadn't caught on with Bobby and ended up being Harker to his demonic-exorcising Van Helsing that late April, he might never have known. But that damn demon didn't shut up from the moment it saw John. It sang her songs, whispered her post-coital sweet nothings, and told him stories that sounded just true enough to be something he almost remembered. It aired their most secret wishes like they had been published in _Demon Quarterly_ for all of Hell to see. And then it really started planting the insanity in his head. No, the night her parents bit it hadn't been a dream. Over the demon's warbling dissection of _Today's Special_, he remembered how he was sure he'd dreamed that he'd died that night, too. But that part couldn't have been real. If it had been, he wouldn't be here. Bobby sent the demon packing not long after it told John he didn't have to believe it; he'd find out soon enough that she had traded their baby for him. He'd learn. As soon as that baby started spitting fire or killing people with a mere look, he'd learn. Why else would Hell have given a damn about some used pussy and her squishy brat? Why else?

John didn't have to have known Bobby for eleven years to look at the guy's face to know he believed it, too.

Heaven, John supposed, should take a good chunk of the blame. Once he'd been guided to Jim Murphy, Heaven never did anything to help him and his boys. And to make that perfectly clear, _Heaven_, not Jim. He knew no one, including himself, to be above hypocrisy, but when it came to keeping secrets, John never held them against anyone. Secrets kept people safe. So when Jim told him to go find some bar owner called Clarence Jaeger and that he had some things about Mary that John should know, he went without being too angry. Then he hit angry when Jaeger told him about his in-laws' hunting legacy and the fact that way too many people knew all about Mary and hadn't bothered to tell him Word One about her. When he was done with Jaeger and his secrets and his anger, he left the boys with Jim as a sign of peace and forgiveness before he went where Baker told him to go to get even more answers.

After that, screw hypocrisy.

He called Ellen as soon as he was clear of Jim's place to let her know exactly why he would not be crossing her path again. She'd had no right to keep that information from him. None. She told him her loyalty went with Deana and Samuel long before it went with him. They hung up on each other at the same time.

Bobby and Caleb went with him, armed, to see Travis. They left the hunter with no questions about whether or not he was to come anywhere near John's boys ever again.

John tightened his circle of trust like a noose around all their necks, but he didn't care. Bobby and Caleb stood behind him, no questions asked. There was something behind Dean's eyes in the years to follow that said he knew something had changed, too, but he didn't ask. Questions was what they had Sammy for, but for some reason, the kid didn't ask either. Apparently their little dysfunctional circle was answer enough for his boys, too.

It was when he came back for the boys after a hunt gone wrong a few months later that he confessed to Jim he wished the pastor had never told him where to go. For the first time since she'd been taken from them fourteen years ago, John felt _his_ Mary falling away from him. He started sleeping with the light on.

For the first time, he knew — not guessed, _knew_ — Hell was coming for his son and eventually, unless he got real fucking creative, he wouldn't be able to stop her.

— Holler —

For nearly sixty years, John waited in Hell. That was the hardest part, but then, he was pretty sure that was their point. John had never waited for anything in his life outside his wife and kids. He could hear every scream and tortured plea of souls being torn apart piece by piece all around him, but never once did they come for him. They should have wanted him. He'd sent enough of them down there in the first place. They should have wanted to rip him down to the muscle and then some. But still they didn't come. No one came to torture him with stories about his wife's murder like they had when he'd dared to exorcise them; no one told him of his children, his friends, about how everything he'd worked for for so long had been completely futile. There was nothing but the dark and the screams of others. But if waiting was the worst Hell's minions could come up with him, he'd take it. For a man who had spent so much of his life so alone, it hadn't really seemed as much a hell as it would for anyone else.

That is, it was until the day he was no longer alone.

The day the owner of the name he'd heard pierce the cold of Hell — never let anyone tell you it's hot down in the pit; it's colder than anything you can imagine — Alistair, came to him, the brutal thing had a smile on its face. The guise Alistair wore smoked between demon and human when it sat cross-legged by his head, putting its chin in its hands. John was about to have a visitor, Alistair told him. After all this time, it was time John had a companion. It must have been a lonely sixty years.

The first screams of anything besides "Come and get me, you fucking cock knockers!" that burst out of John the entire time he'd been in Hell came as the hellhounds dragged the bloodied soul of his baby boy to rest at his feet. At the furious tears, Alistair's grin grew wider than a clown's. No, the younger pride and joy of John's loins hadn't done anything to deserve a sojourn downside, nothing more than being born to a woman who callously gave him away all to save his father. Who he was or whether he had or hadn't done anything to deserve it didn't matter; Little Sammy Winchester belonged to Hell and no force above or below could change that.

The next hundred and thirty-five days were the worst agony John had ever and could ever imagine. Nothing happened to him. No, they never did anything to him. They simply let Alistair have at his baby, extracting cries and howls for his daddy to do something, anything with a glee which John had until now only heard from every twisted corner of Hell but his own. John begged to take his son's place, but every word fell on deaf ears. There was no getting to Sam, no holding his child to quell his terror. For John, who had spent his entire life doing everything he could to make sure that baby and his brother grew up to be strong, independent men, it was so much worse than the physical pain of anything Alistair and his cronies could ever have done to him. He swore right then and there as he was calling to his son in as soothing a voice he could manage after screaming it raw that they would pay. He would make all of Hell pay.

And then, suddenly, the tormenting cries stopped. John's head twisted from side to side, but his boy was gone. Everything about him froze. His only remaining fear was confirmed when Alistair showed up once again, cocky and smiling like a game show host.

_Guess how long Dean has, Johnny?_

_It won't be long until the two of you can be a family again. See? There are advantages to this place. We are just as family-oriented as they are up there. I wonder if he'll enjoy this as much as you do._

It had been sixty-six years and probably two hundred days or so, give or take, when John heard the protesting groan of the gate opening. He didn't waste the opportunity.

— Holler —

When John arrived wherever it was that he ended up going, he went looking for the first personthingwhatever he could find to demand answers. He knew time worked differently; the math hadn't been hard to figure out seeing Sammy looking pretty much the same as he had what felt like sixty years earlier. Besides, what's the fun of Hell if things only take as long as they do up topside, right? In the few moments he had with them, his boys had looked like they'd been through the wringer since he'd last seen them. How long had he left them alone like that? A year? Ten? How long had he left them that Sam had died by who knows whose hands, leaving Dean to think he needed to pull the kid out of Hell? How had things spun so FUBAR, as if their lives weren't already there to begin with?

Before he could find the man with the answers, he ran into someone who would have more answers he supposed than anyone else: his mother-in-law looked a lot less fragile after everything John had been through, after everything he now knew. He understood her mask now. Part of him really wanted to throttle her for that — _after_ he got his answers.

She was as homey has he remembered, offering him a seat on a sunny park bench that reminded him of Mary and the boys and a smile to go with his answers. They had time for it, she told him. There was nothing they could do for Dean but keep watching anyway.

When Mary had married John, she explained, Samuel and Deana had made it their mission to watch over him. They knew that there was nothing that they could do if anything went wrong, but their daughter had brought him into their world without his knowing, without understanding. They would watch. And when the boys came along, they would watch. When they were three, they would watch. Now that they had been two, they still watched. She laughed when she told him that the only reason Samuel wasn't there with her to tell this to John himself was that even he had his pride, and admitting to their son-in-law he had been completely off the mark about the kid who grew up in front of their ever-watchful eyes into a hunter more respected than even Samuel had been was something he wasn't prepared to do. She punched his shoulder at the bewildered look he knew must have been on his face; that was Samuel's idea of a compliment. He should take it where he could get it.

She filled him in on the six months (really, it was only six months?) he'd been gone. There was little humor in her hunter's eyes as she told him of his children's struggles with his death. There were tears there when she told him of her grandson's complete devastation at the loss of his brother and of Sam's strapping on at the impending loss of his. She sobered when she tried to reassure John that he had done the best he could with those kids under the circumstances.

John cried (angry or weary tears, he wasn't sure) when she was done. She had answered so many questions but one. How could Mary not have told him? So much could have been different. They could have been prepared. They could have been there to do this together. Their boys . . . It didn't have to be this way, not if Mary had told him from the beginning.

If she had listened to Samuel the way that Sammy listened to John, he meant?

Deana's eyes were once again the kind, motherly lie she'd had when she was alive as she told him that while, yes, Mary hadn't been around to tell him, Little Sammy had done it for her. When he looked at her with that smart-ass cock of an eyebrow that demanded explanation, all she did was smile. If they had had a dime every time Sammy said something that had once come right out of Mary's mouth, they'd have enough to buy this joint.

John laughed for the first time in he couldn't remember how long. There was something fitting to that. They always said that children turned into their parents. He now knew for sure that his boys were living proof of that. The laugh died not long after it started. Yes, his boys had definitely grown into their parents. He'd give anything for Dean to have not grown into his father. He'd give anything Sammy to not know the kind of pain he'd known, to see his light go up in flames on a cracked but otherwise indistinct ceiling, too.

His mother-in-law (strange how he'd never really thought of her that way) seemed to understand exactly what he was thinking. She only gave him a look that said there was nothing they could do about that now. He returned it with one of his own that clearly asked if she knew how fucked up that all was.

After thirty-six years home, she knew all too well.

So what were they going to do about this cluster?

When Deana so quietly said "Nothing", John wasn't entirely sure he heard it. Because there was no way. They couldn't just do nothing. He wasn't made to do nothing.

What did he think she and Samuel had been doing since they'd died? It was infuriating, but it was what it was.

That was when the freak with the wings walked in. Castiel, he said his name was. And he'd be heading down there to help John's boys here soon. A few things had to happen first, things John wasn't going to like, but his boys were going to come out of this one, too.

Boy_s_? Zzz? As in more than one?

The winged thing smiled at him. John just needed to have a little trust. Until then, he needed to try to enjoy that he was finally home.

All John could say was that he wouldn't be home until he was with his boys again.

Deana and Castiel shared a look that left John shivering.

They left him alone after that. Deana showed up a while later with Samuel, each sitting at his either side like they were waiting for a break in him that didn't come. Over the next year, they would come and go, offering only their company as they, too, waited for the inevitable. He had little to say to them, unable to know them as who they were rather than who he had thought they were. After a while, they started bringing Jim along in the hope that he could bridge the gap, but soon they left Jim to do the dirty work. John just sat with his face turned toward the sunlight, a realm he hadn't been used to operating in now for so long, and listened to his sons struggle through their year with brave words and quiet doubts. When Dean's end came, Sam's open weeping sent John's heart right back to Hell. Even when Castiel did as promised and pulled Dean back out, John's heart didn't come back with it.

From now on, whatever this turned out to be, he would be sleeping with the light on.

_End._

_

* * *

  
_

_Yes, I am a nerd and sat down to do the math on just how long I had Sam in Hell. If ten years is one month, there are 120 months in one. If I round to 4 weeks in a month, there are 30 months in a week. Divided by 7 is 4.285 months in a day. Divided by 24 hours is 0.18 months in an hour, or 5.4 days in an hour. Multiplied by 25 for the number of hours Sam was dead (since we don't know exactly how long he was dead, I went with just over 24 hours) is 135 days. So yeah, there you are with his math. I added another 36 hours, which is 194.4 days, for John before the gates opened. Now I remember why I tested out of calc my freshman year — so I wouldn't have to do that anymore. Yick._


End file.
